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Charlotte Movie Review

Charlotte is a 2022 animated biographical drama film written by Erik Rutheford and starring Keira Knightley. It’s a pretty good, underrated picture.

Charlotte Salomon, a young German-Jewish painter, flees Berlin on the eve of the Second World War and attempts to reinvent herself in the South of France. This movie is a co-production between Canada, Belgium and France. It garnered some praise and attention at animated festivals and awards, including the Annies, but it failed to garner widespread acclaim.

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And it’s a shame because it’s actually a pretty good movie that did not deserve those harsh reviews. In fact, in a weak year for animation it is one of the better movies of the year. Yes, you can certainly argue that the filmmakers failed to imbue this movie with authentic details as both the animation and the storytelling are only good without ever reaching greatness. But overall, the film was engaging throughout, which is a rare occurrence for a biopic.

Charlotte is particularly effective at bringing this story to life through a very interesting tone. You can just sense the impending doom throughout as the film’s dreary, dangerous atmosphere is quite remarkable. A lot of praise should be directed to the strong dialogue and solid voice acting. They definitely speak in overly soft voices, but overall the performances are solid.

And the story of Charlotte Salomon is definitely one that was worthy of the big screen treatment. Although the characterization overall was only serviceable, you still feel emotionally engaged with her plight and the subplot with her grandfather was quite interesting and mildly disturbing. The ending was quite tragic.

Charlotte’s animation is excellent. Yes, even more artistry could have been put on display, but overall this is a very visually pleasing, elegant animated drama that is particularly effective in its beautiful backgrounds and lush painterly strokes given to the proceedings. The score and pacing are both terrific too. The runtime of ninety minutes was just right for this story, leading to a film that is consistently involving. Overall, I am in the minority as I prefer it to ‘Loving Vincent’.

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